Google Now Forces Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube

Post by tracker1 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:41 PM UTC

jchw wrote: post #54

danShumway wrote: post #37

Most likely a user-agent check to ensure compatibility. I don't assume any ill intent. That being said, what does annoy me is that we've known for years that feature detection is preferable to user-agent detection, and I would kind of expect one of the biggest web development companies in the world to be following best practices. This isn't my local pizza shop, Google engineers should know better. Have they already f…

Disclaimer: I work at Google but not on YouTube, speaking in a personal capacity. Long story short, it doesn’t really work this way. As an example, go to google.com on Internet Explorer 6. No, I’m serious. You will find that it loads just fine and even functions, over plain HTTP. It’s only a small subset of functionality, but it does actually work. You can’t do that with feature detection. YouTube may have crossed th…

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) 
    AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) 
    Chrome/64.0.3282.140 Safari/537.36 Edge/17.17134

    Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) 
    AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) 
    Chrome/76.0.3800.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/76.0.173.0

Post by tracker1 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #12

> Ironically, the same page states “We support the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge.” it shouldn't be that difficult to understand that the latest version of edge means the latest production version, not the brand new complete overhaul of the browser on a different platform that's currently in preview mode.

Post by tracker1 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

013a wrote: post #40

Conlectus wrote: post #6

Almost certainly unintentional. They're likely confused by a new User-Agent string or some feature detection gone wrong.

That's almost definitely the case. But there is such a thing as maliciously unintentional, and this seriously keeps happening with every browser that isn't Chrome. For example; Google is a technically advanced company, so they must have a CI check somewhere in their Youtube release process which confirms that a suite of browser tests pass before a greenlight is given on release. Do you think Chrome is one of the brow…

Post by tracker1 » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

Conlectus wrote: post #19

tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain? To me it looks like YouTube intentionally, not accidentally, updated their browser block list to include Microsoft Edge Preview.

They likely have a white list of browsers, not a black list, so new browsers may simply not be supported until they update the list. Edit: And the new Edge version likely identifies itself differently.

Post by emilecantin » Tue, May 28, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

Analemma_ wrote: post #90

emilecantin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, what a mess! The UA string mentions almost every browser except the one it actually is... I understand the reasons, but I think it might be time for a big "reset", and for browsers to stop lying about who they are.

> but I think it might be time for a big "reset", and for browsers to stop lying about who they are The problem is, you can't do this unless every website also "resets" at the same time, because the bad UA detection code will still be out there. The vendors aren't any happier with this situation than we are, but they do it because they have no choice.